my S3 died last night-seems to be power supply- at first it was stuck in reboot loop of welcome power up then blank screen, lather rinse repeat.

I unplugged it and went to bed. Looked at it to day with the cover off and when i plug it in a get nothing but a clicking from the power supply- not the drvie click of death (had a dozen or so tivo's over 12 or so years so know that sound well sadly).

When I look at it from the front on the right of the tall black heatsink is a tall skinny cap that is bulging- (C701 on the board) marked 2200uf 25v (another post says that cluster of tall ones is the usual culprit). But also just to the left of that black heat sink are 2 shorter caps also marked 2200uf but 6.3v (C401 and the one next to it)

I assume i just need to change these 3 caps.

But only really every built from kits so no idea how to spec things.

some other posts say I should be looking for low ESR types and others said be sure to get 105 degrees

Sometimes 2 capacitors with the same specs will differ in size and shape, one being taller and skinnier, the other shorter and wider.

As long as these aren't too wide or, if under a heat sink that "arches" over, like on S2 supplies, too tall, those choices should work fine.

Those are two of the better regarded brands.

The prices are a little on the high side, but not terribly.

$5 for shipping is a bit much, especially if they aren't going to combine it into one order and only charge the $5 once.

And you'll have plenty of leftovers.

Make sure to observe polarity, one lead's marked with negative signs (which makes the other one the positive by default). Observe which way the ones you unsolder and remove are turned and put the new ones in the same way.

Sometimes 2 capacitors with the same specs will differ in size and shape, one being taller and skinnier, the other shorter and wider.

As long as these aren't too wide or, if under a heat sink that "arches" over, like on S2 supplies, too tall, those choices should work fine.

Those are two of the better regarded brands.

The prices are a little on the high side, but not terribly.

$5 for shipping is a bit much, especially if they aren't going to combine it into one order and only charge the $5 once.

And you'll have plenty of leftovers.

Make sure to observe polarity, one lead's marked with negative signs (which makes the other one the positive by default). Observe which way the ones you unsolder and remove are turned and put the new ones in the same way.

thanks for confirming-

i checked the physical measurements and they were in the ballpark of what's on the board now (I noticed some others i saw were way off and thought the specs might be different so avoided them). (and the black heatsink on the S3 power supply DOES arch over the 6.5 volt ones )

I actually like that there's 4 times as many of each that i need- i have a second S3 of the same vintage so figure it's only time before that one craps out. So I really need 2 sets and this way i can screw up twice in the process- ;-) (haven't always had the best luck futzing with my tivo's- many years back i "Donated" an early directivo to the the folks at DDB when they needed one to figure out something for the topic that shall not be mentioned. I had somehow futzed the PROM trying to reprogram it.So it was worthless to me but not an issue for those guys....)

the shipping was a bit annoying but figured it was simpler to use my amazon account rather then opening yet another one someplace else.

i checked the physical measurements and they were in the ballpark of what's on the board now (I noticed some others i saw were way off and thought the specs might be different so avoided them). (and the black heatsink on the S3 power supply DOES arch over the 6.5 volt ones )

I actually like that there's 4 times as many of each that i need- i have a second S3 of the same vintage so figure it's only time before that one craps out. So I really need 2 sets and this way i can screw up twice in the process- ;-) (haven't always had the best luck futzing with my tivo's- many years back i "Donated" an early directivo to the the folks at DDB when they needed one to figure out something for the topic that shall not be mentioned. I had somehow futzed the PROM trying to reprogram it.So it was worthless to me but not an issue for those guys....)

the shipping was a bit annoying but figured it was simpler to use my amazon account rather then opening yet another one someplace else.

thanks again
Mike

If you've got experience unsoldering, programming, and resoldering a PROM, this should be a piece of cake for you. Good luck.

If you've got experience unsoldering, programming, and resoldering a PROM, this should be a piece of cake for you. Good luck.

nah, wish i could do surface mount but a little over my head- that's why i donated it- lol.

Back on the series1 directivo's you could just reprogram the prom on the board. (in fact the prom came at the very beginning set up without the programming on the drive even being encrypted, then tivo/directv sent down an update to encrypt the drive contents. There were tools to reprogram it yourself- and I tried them but i futzed it somehow. So I donated it to the guys working on other tools since they were ableto unsolder, reprogram and socket.

Years and years ago some things from kits or plans and soldered myself so i can handle this (I can recall the first thing I built was a ring detector for a modem for an atari 400 computer, in fact i think it was basically some caps and a relay on a bread board from the rat shack) . So while surface mount is over my head something with leads is not a problem.

nah, wish i could do surface mount but a little over my head- that's why i donated it- lol.

Back on the series1 directivo's you could just reprogram the prom on the board. (in fact the prom came at the very beginning set up without the programming on the drive even being encrypted, then tivo/directv sent down an update to encrypt the drive contents. There were tools to reprogram it yourself- and I tried them but i futzed it somehow. So I donated it to the guys working on other tools since they were ableto unsolder, reprogram and socket.

Years and years ago some things from kits or plans and soldered myself so i can handle this (I can recall the first thing I built was a ring detector for a modem for an atari 400 computer, in fact i think it was basically some caps and a relay on a bread board from the rat shack) . So while surface mount is over my head something with leads is not a problem.

If you feel comfortable removing the power supply, and want to pay shipping/mailing both ways (and a few bucks for the replacement capactitor(s), I can unsolder the bad ones and solder in good replacements, no charge for labor.

Hi Unitron, I'm trying to extend the life of my beloved Series 3. Does your offer to replace bad caps still stand? If so, please let me know what I need to do to get started!

My Series 3 TiVo failed this past week too with fan noise that had been occurring for a few weeks.

The system was completely dead, after going into a reboot loop. I feared the hard drive had failed. Following removing the top cover and plugging in, I could hear the tic tic tic noise from the power supply and I found that there were 4 defective capacitors on the Power Supply board plus I figured that the bearings in the fan were defective also. I purchased a new fan from local (and on-line www.frozencpu.com) company, part number 'Everflow, 127025DL'. I also replaced the following capacitors on the Power Supply board with NTE parts. C401 & C402 replaced with 2200uF 16V,
C601 replaced with 2200uF 16V,and C701 replaced with 2200uF 25V.

When the TiVo was reassembled it powered up and all the TiVo functions ran correctly and even seemed faster to me. The FAN was not running. Testing indicated that the controlling circuitry on the control board only sourced ~3V to the fan with the system temperature up to 59C degrees with cover half off. I decided to wire the fan to the 7V power supply output minimizing fan noise and testing finding the nominal system temperature around 38C and no system problems. This fan running at constant speed is a tad louder but I will deal with it to keep the unit running and healthy as I have lifetime on this system and grandfathered into the $6.95 MSD on my other S3.

It really shocks me that a bunch of us are having these go all at the same time. I purchased this S3 immediately upon release after being in the beta testing of the unit.

I have a refurbished TCD652160 (DVR826D) that I activated 8/25/2009. It is freezing during playback, generally when I skip 30 sec, and has rebooted once. My assumtion was that the drive is going, but do those symtoms align at all with bad caps? Is there anything I can do to actually verify that the drive is going bad? I'm going to replace it with a 1 TB. I guess I should pop it open and check for the Capxcon power supply capacitors before I take it down for the disk change. Any comments or advice would be appreciated. Anything else I should do while it is open?

I have a refurbished TCD652160 (DVR826D) that I activated 8/25/2009. It is freezing during playback, generally when I skip 30 sec, and has rebooted once. My assumtion was that the drive is going, but do those symtoms align at all with bad caps? Is there anything I can do to actually verify that the drive is going bad? I'm going to replace it with a 1 TB. I guess I should pop it open and check for the Capxcon power supply capacitors before I take it down for the disk change. Any comments or advice would be appreciated. Anything else I should do while it is open?

You'll need a #10 Torx driver to take the top off. It'll probably be enough to remove the drive bracket as well, if you need to take the drive off of the bracket there's a small chance of needing a #15, but most likely the #10 will work.

Assuming they refurbed with the same 160GB WD drive that comes stock, get the .iso image for the bootable cd with the WD diagnostic software, burn yourself a copy, run the short test and then run the long test.

WD10EADS-65M2B0. Its in a computer now and seems to increment its idle count every 5 min. So hopefully I wont need wdidle3. I'm having trouble booting wdidle3 on my x64 system.

I do hardware design for a living, so none of this is tough in that regard. Just getting all my ducks in a row before starting.

The symptoms I'm having are strange. I get long pauses. Yesterday it recorded the Daily Show and then said there was no signal when I tried to play it. It recorded another show at the same time and it played fine. I looked at cable signal strength and it was 100. I re-seated all the rf connectors anyway. Maybe it is reacting to some weird Comcast issues? I want to up the drive anyway, so this is a good excuse to get it done.

WD10EADS-65M2B0. Its in a computer now and seems to increment its idle count every 5 min. So hopefully I wont need wdidle3. I'm having trouble booting wdidle3 on my x64 system.

I do hardware design for a living, so none of this is tough in that regard. Just getting all my ducks in a row before starting.

The symptoms I'm having are strange. I get long pauses. Yesterday it recorded the Daily Show and then said there was no signal when I tried to play it. It recorded another show at the same time and it played fine. I looked at cable signal strength and it was 100. I re-seated all the rf connectors anyway. Maybe it is reacting to some weird Comcast issues? I want to up the drive anyway, so this is a good excuse to get it done.

That should be a good TiVo drive. I'm running the 2TB version in an S3 HD with no problems and several others in computers.

Go ahead and get a friend to let you use their computer for a few minutes to disable Intellipark and eliminate a possible problem.

The TiVo keeps the drive busy all the time, so Intellipark will never kick in. Until the TiVo needs to do a soft reboot, which will give the drive enough "no signal" time to park the heads which means when the TiVo gets far enough in the boot process to call on the drive it will be asleep, which means the TiVo will reboot and try again, which means the drive will still be asleep, lather, rinse, repeat.

And don't bother going to the bigger drive until you're sure the power supply is okay.

And go ahead and run the WD diagnostics on the original drive.

If it passes the long test, you know you have to look elsewhere for the problem.

A lot. It's a well known problem. I have several bulging caps on one of my S3s. (I haven't opened the other recently.) If they go plotz, I'll drag out the old soldering iron.

When did you purchase your S3s? Reason I ask, I'm looking to buy a used S3 and was hoping to avoid any bad caps if possible. But of course I'm not sure if Tivo switched cap suppliers upon learning of them being defective.

When did you purchase your S3s? Reason I ask, I'm looking to buy a used S3 and was hoping to avoid any bad caps if possible. But of course I'm not sure if Tivo switched cap suppliers upon learning of them being defective.

I happened to purchase both my S3's in the fall of 2006. Right around when they came out if i recall. (one the first week, the other ~ month later)

BUT...

I'm under the impression that all the S3's where built during the period when these bad cap's where widely installed (as no one knew until some time later there was a problem).

The S3's themselves got replaced by the TivoHD's around a year later if i recall. so they weren't built over a very long period of time.

So If you are buying a used S3 i think it's a crapshoot. Either be prepared to spend $5-10 yourself and use a soldering iron or budget to spend $100 for the weakness replacement. Maybe you get lucky and it never happens but it seems like a significant percentage will eventually have the problem. (By significant I mean some percentage more than "normal" but certainly not a majority or anything like that)

When did you purchase your S3s? Reason I ask, I'm looking to buy a used S3 and was hoping to avoid any bad caps if possible. But of course I'm not sure if Tivo switched cap suppliers upon learning of them being defective.

TiVo doesn't have capacitor suppliers.

TiVo has subcontractors who have sub-subcontractors who have distributors who have capacitor suppliers.

As far as I know there's no reliable database of which models built when do or don't have capacitors that might go bad.

The good news is under $10 in parts and a little soldering and you're back in business.

When did you purchase your S3s? Reason I ask, I'm looking to buy a used S3 and was hoping to avoid any bad caps if possible. But of course I'm not sure if Tivo switched cap suppliers upon learning of them being defective.

2006 and 2007. If it's an oriiginal S3, then it almost surely has caps that may suffer from capacitor disease. That doesn't mean they absolutely will fail, but it's reasonably likely. Replacing a handful of electrolytic caps is just no big deal, though.

I happened to purchase both my S3's in the fall of 2006. Right around when they came out if i recall. (one the first week, the other ~ month later)

BUT...

I'm under the impression that all the S3's where built during the period when these bad cap's where widely installed (as no one knew until some time later there was a problem).

The S3's themselves got replaced by the TivoHD's around a year later if i recall. so they weren't built over a very long period of time.

So If you are buying a used S3 i think it's a crapshoot. Either be prepared to spend $5-10 yourself and use a soldering iron or budget to spend $100 for the weakness replacement. Maybe you get lucky and it never happens but it seems like a significant percentage will eventually have the problem. (By significant I mean some percentage more than "normal" but certainly not a majority or anything like that)

The capacitor problem in general was already well known by the time the original S3 came on the market (by that time I and thousands of others had BX chipset Pentium II/III boards fail, and S2 TiVos and DirecTivos had already had problems, and that was about the time my mom's computer's power supply went BANG--a small cap didn't bulge, it exploded), but there were millions and millions of the bad caps in the supply chains along with good ones by then.

The S3 HDs are also vulnerable to this problem, that's how I happened to be able to get mine for free, because the power supply was bad.

Did I mention that the LCD monitor I'm using right now was left on the curb down the street for the garbage truck and I happened to see it first (and lcdalternatives had a cap kit for it)?

The capacitor problem in general was already well known by the time the original S3 came on the market (by that time I and thousands of others had BX chipset Pentium II/III boards fail, and S2 TiVos and DirecTivos had already had problems, and that was about the time my mom's computer's power supply went BANG--a small cap didn't bulge, it exploded), but there were millions and millions of the bad caps in the supply chains along with good ones by then....

interesting- didn't realize it was so long of a period when the mess was ongoing.

Does anyone have the quantities and dimensions on these for an original S3?

Scott

there's a bunch in there of difference shapes and sizes- not sure that the same ones always go bad. There's different links here on the board of various ones that folks have used in their particular tivo's not sure there are always consisted. When i was looking for myself- I actually found places selling 'tivo capacitor replacement kits' that didn't have the ones i needed for my box.

So I think your best bet is just open your box up and read the specs on the side of any ones that looked bulged and then find them wherever you can.

Does anyone have the quantities and dimensions on these for an original S3?

Scott

The ones most likely to be bad are on the +12V (yellow wire) or +5V (red wire) outputs (+ lead connected to that, - lead connected to ground--black wire), and likely 2200uF at 16 to 25V, and I read of one person who had a bad 3300uf.

The thing to do is open it up and inspect visually, (and checking the orange, red, and yellow wires with a DC voltmeter on the 20 or 25 volt scale is a good idea as well, look for the orange to be in the neighborhood of +3.3V) and get the specs off of the caps themselves, and remember, when buying replacements of the same capacitance in microFarads and the same voltage rating (which should always be at least the next step up from the voltage of the circuit, but not more than 2 or 3 steps up), also be sure to get ones rated for 105 degrees Celsius and low ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance).

Does anyone have the quantities and dimensions on these for an original S3?

Scott

And another thing, I've seen a picture of an S3 HD power supply which looked very much like the picture of the OLED S3 supply (except for that extra wire that powers the OLED), and that picture looked different from the supply in my HD, so there may be more than one version of the supply for the 648, so there's no substitution for raising the hood and looking for yourself.

I have been posting in some other threads about my series 3 OLED. I checked out the power supply and its only reading about 7.5 volts so it looks like this is where the problem is.

On visual inspection there does not appear to be any bulging caps (I have seen the pic floating around here). Anybody have any clue which caps are the 12 volt ones? Is there a schematic around anywhere?

My suspicions were correct and I had a power supply starting to fail in one of my 2 S3 OLED (faint wavy lines in video). It finally decided to go into a reboot cycle on Thursday. I opened it up yesterday and found the2 2200uF 6.3V caps (C401/C402) bulging. To verify the power supply was the issue, I swapped in the power supply from my other S3 and it resolved the boot issue and the wavy lines. Interestingly, that one also had 1 bulging capacitor which was the 2200uF 25V cap (C701).

I'm putting together my order today and had planned on replacing all of the 2200uF and 3300uF caps in both power supplies (8 each) as I've seen other cases here of many of those having issues, but thought I would check here to see if there were any opinions on replacing the remaining capacitors (7 each) especially since most if not all seem to have been made by Capxcon.

I have been posting in some other threads about my series 3 OLED. I checked out the power supply and its only reading about 7.5 volts so it looks like this is where the problem is.

On visual inspection there does not appear to be any bulging caps (I have seen the pic floating around here). Anybody have any clue which caps are the 12 volt ones? Is there a schematic around anywhere?

Quote:

Originally Posted by HerronScott

My suspicions were correct and I had a power supply starting to fail in one of my 2 S3 OLED (faint wavy lines in video). It finally decided to go into a reboot cycle on Thursday. I opened it up yesterday and found the2 2200uF 6.3V caps (C401/C402) bulging. To verify the power supply was the issue, I swapped in the power supply from my other S3 and it resolved the boot issue and the wavy lines. Interestingly, that one also had 1 bulging capacitor which was the 2200uF 25V cap (C701).

I'm putting together my order today and had planned on replacing all of the 2200uF and 3300uF caps in both power supplies (8 each) as I've seen other cases here of many of those having issues, but thought I would check here to see if there were any opinions on replacing the remaining capacitors (7 each) especially since most if not all seem to have been made by Capxcon.

Scott

The yellow wires are connected to the +12 Volt output, the red wires to the +5 Volt output, and the black wires to the power supply's "ground".

All of the capacitors each have 2 wires coming out of the bottom. These are called leads, as in lead a horse to water, not as in lead pipe cinch.

If you are capable of it, remove the power supply board from the TiVo and look at the bottom.

You'll see an area of copper where the yellow wires stick through from the top, a different area where the red wires stick through from the top, and a different different area where the black wires stick through from the top.

If you look at where else those copper areas, called lands, extend to, you'll find where one or two capacitors have one of their leads sticking through the +12V land and the other sticking through the ground land.

This is called being "across" the 12V line, or output.

The same technique will reveal one or more capacitors "across" the 5V line.

There are other capacitors, or "caps", on the power supply board, which are part of other circuits, which are probably fine.

It seems, so far, to be just the caps which have one lead grounded and the other lead connected to either the 12V or 5V output which have developed problems.

As for replacing caps because of what brand they are, CapXon is widely known as CrapXon, but the Series 2 Dual Tuner power supply uses them and I haven't heard of any of that particular model having problems so far, so brand alone is only a possible indicator.

It seems, so far, to be just the caps which have one lead grounded and the other lead connected to either the 12V or 5V output which have developed problems.

As for replacing caps because of what brand they are, CapXon is widely known as CrapXon, but the Series 2 Dual Tuner power supply uses them and I haven't heard of any of that particular model having problems so far, so brand alone is only a possible indicator.

Also, counterfeit versions of reputable brands are being produced.

I'll ignore the rest since you were replying to 2 posts and the rest appeared to be directed to Dan.

I think that I'll ignore the smaller higher voltage caps and the very large 200V one near the inputs and only replace the ones I'd already indicated except I'll add the 2 470uF and the 1 1000uF ones to to the list.

Regarding counterfeits, you would hope that 3Y would be purchasing directly from the vendor.

I'll ignore the rest since you were replying to 2 posts and the rest appeared to be directed to Dan.

I think that I'll ignore the smaller higher voltage caps and the very large 200V one near the inputs and only replace the ones I'd already indicated except I'll add the 2 470uF and the 1 1000uF ones to to the list.

Regarding counterfeits, you would hope that 3Y would be purchasing directly from the vendor.